I’ve always wanted to go there! How is LA? Do you like living there? What is there to do? Are people really happy there? What about your politics? I heard….

I love meeting new people from the neighboring apartment rooms in my building. 

In the cafe’s & bakeries where I attempt to try all the danishes (they call them pastries) I can, I find myself asking more questions than ever before in my life. And the questions I have are at the essence the same questions being asked of me!

One of the reasons that Denmark sparked my curiosity was that it’s been ranked the “happiest country in the world” many times over. Now being here, and trying to meet the locals and get a grasp on what makes them different than where I grew up, I see a couple of things that may help! 

Danes have an active culture, and since I’m here for the last couple weeks of summer, I see hundreds of people biking at every intersection. I see young students like me jumping into the sea, off of the long spiraling piers that have been built for hundreds of people to gather around the water. I see many walking wanderers taking the metro, walking to and from everything.

This could definitely be a part of what makes them happier. But at the same time, they have oppositional forces at work against them too!

Locals around my age, when I ask them about how they feel, more often than not find themselves in a place where they’d like to be ambitious in a career–or say traveling the world–but the culture of contentedness (basically, “I am happy with what I have right now”) can sometimes shame them into not following their actual passions.

This is just what I’ve been told!

And to make sense of it, I think that there’s a perverse type of pressure put on Danish people when they’ve been ranked the happiest. Because what if you aren’t happy? Then does that admission of unhappiness bring you guilt or shame or dishonor? 

It’s reductive to say all Danes are happier than all Americans, and inaccurate to say that Americans are more ambitious than Danes.

But each statement holds some truth, in that our societies prioritize our values differently. 

Denmark has high taxes to cover welfare costs, meaning a baseline is created for the standard of living for most folks, and that allows them to be more content with their lives.

America has role models who, invariably are the most influential, the most rich, the most powerful people. We grin and approve when students and kids want to be ambitious or chase a big dream. 

In Denmark, there are politicians and students riding the same bike lanes. There’s a more equal leveled, egalitarian vibe to how the society operates. Whether this is better or worse overall for a whole society isn’t for me to decide,

But I’m sure glad I’m getting to see both sides. 

Because I plan, from both of these cultures, to take the best & leave the rest.

Thanks for reading,

Qui-Shawn Tran 😀